Hunters pa-3

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Why?" Castillo said.

  "Because yesterday, Colonel, Colonel Torine gave you a check ride in the C-20, which you passed, and which will be recorded on your FAA records this morning."

  "Oh, that's great," Castillo said.

  "Anything else, Charley?"

  "Have you any idea why the ambassador would send me a message? To Berlin?"

  "No. But he was fascinated to hear that we have people looking into briefcases in suburban Philadelphia. He can't imagine why you didn't share that with him."

  "Because, as far as we know, that's fantasy. Did you tell him that?"

  "I did. He didn't seem very impressed. What did the message say?"

  "I don't know. I'm not going to Berlin to read it."

  "You want to tell me where you are going?"

  "Paris was a waste of time. Lorimer's apartment had been searched by the Deuxieme Bureau and the UN before my friend there could get in. I had a look. Nothing useful. And I'm just about finished here. All I have left to do is go see Billy Kocian in Budapest. I don't think that will take long…"

  He stopped when he saw Gorner holding up his hand.

  "Hold it a second, Dick," Castillo said and gestured for Gorner to speak.

  "I don't think going to see Billy Kocian right now is going to be profitable," Gorner said.

  "Why not?" Castillo asked.

  "He's in the Telki Hospital with a broken ankle."

  "What happened?"

  "He fell down the stairs in his apartment."

  "How do you know he broke his ankle?"

  "He called and told me."

  "He called and told you," Castillo repeated, softly, and then, raising his voice slightly for the speakerphone, asked, "Dick, where's Torine?"

  "In your place. He and Fernando."

  "Get on another line and ask him if there's any reason he can't bring the G-III to Budapest right away."

  "I can think of one," Miller replied. "You don't own it yet."

  "Call Jake, and ask him if the airplane is ready to cross the Atlantic. I'll hold."

  Castillo felt Gorner's eyes on him.

  "You think something happened to Billy," Gorner said.

  "What I'm thinking is that it's unlikely that Billy would call to tell you he fell down. More than likely, he called you to tell you that because He didn't want you to know what really happened to him in case you heard he was in the hospital."

  Gorner's eyebrows went up but he didn't say anything.

  Miller's voice came over the speaker.

  "I have Colonel Torine on the line for you, Colonel Castillo," Miller's more than a little sarcastic voice announced.

  "What's up, Charley?" Torine's voice came over the speaker.

  "If Dick gave the guy who came with the Gulfstream a cashier's check for the airplane as soon as the Riggs Bank opens, how soon could you get it to Budapest?"

  "You mean handle the paperwork later?"

  "Right."

  "If he goes along with the cashier's check, it would take me maybe an hour and a half to go wheels-up at Baltimore. I can't make it nonstop. I'd have to refuel someplace, maybe Rhine-Main-"

  "That's now Frankfurt International. Hadn't you heard? No more Rhine-Main."

  "And didn't that make you feel old?" Torine replied. "Figure nine hours total flight time, an hour to refuel. Figure twelve hours from the time Dick gives the owner's guy the check, presuming he's willing to go along. If he's not?"

  "Give him the check anyway and don't tell him where you're going on your final test flight."

  "One more problem. I'll have to bring Fernando along to fly the right seat. He's not going to like that."

  "Do you really need someone in the right seat?"

  Torine hesitated before replying, "You know, I've never landed an airplane anywhere where someone counted the pilots. You have a reason you don't want Fernando to come?"

  "I want Fernando to go home to Texas and keep the home fires burning."

  "Okay, Charley. Not a problem."

  Fernando's voice came over the loudspeaker: "I'll fly the goddamned airplane to Budapest, Gringo, and then go home."

  "You're sure?"

  "I'm sure."

  "Thanks," Castillo said. "Both of you. I'll get us rooms at the Gellert."

  "See you in the wee hours tomorrow," Torine said and hung up.

  "Anything else before I have my breakfast, Charley?" Miller asked.

  "You ever get the avionics for the Ranger?"

  "They're on their way to Buenos Aires."

  "Okay. Great. I'll be in touch, Dick."

  "Do I tell the ambassador where you're going?"

  "You might as well. He'll know anyway."

  "Run that past me again?"

  "I'm going to use his aerial taxi to get me there," Castillo said. "He'll know."

  "I don't quite understand that, but, what the hell. I probably don't have the Need to Know. Watch your back, buddy."

  Castillo switched off the telephone and went back into his computer case, retrieved a business card, and held it in his hand as he punched in numbers on the telephone.

  "Now what?" Otto Gorner asked.

  "I'm calling an aerial taxi to take me to Budapest."

  "You sure you can get one? And is the Tages Zeitung going to have to pay for it?"

  "I'm sure I can get one. The CIA owns the taxi service and Ambassador Montvale told them I go to the head of the line. And, no, the Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund will pay for it."

  "Get two seats," Otto said.

  Castillo looked at him curiously.

  "You're right. Eric's story was a little too detailed," Gorner said. "He said he fell over his dog going down the stairs. If he had fallen over that goddamned dog, he wouldn't have told me. In fact, if he'd fallen down, period, he wouldn't have told me. Now I really want to know what's going on."

  "This is Colonel Castillo," Charley said to the telephone. "I'm in Fulda, Germany, and I-and one other-have to get to Budapest as soon as possible. How's the best way to do that?"

  Thirty seconds later, he put down the phone.

  "Our taxi will be at Leipzig-Halle in ninety minutes," he said. [TWO] Office of the Ambassador The Embassy of the United States of America Lauro Miller 1776 Montevideo, Republica Oriental del Uruguay 1005 6 August 2005 "There's something going on around here, Robert," Ambassador McGrory said to Robert Howell, "that has the smell of rotten eggs and you and I are going to get to the bottom of it."

  "I'm not sure that I know what you mean, Mr. Ambassador."

  "I really would have thought, Robert, that someone in your line of business would be curious about Mr. Yung. His being suddenly called to the States and then coming back here to handle the Lorimer matter."

  "I admit I wondered about that," Howell said.

  "It could, of course, have just happened. But I don't think so."

  "What do you think it is, Mr. Ambassador?"

  "That, I don't know. That is what you and I are going to find out," McGrory said.

  "What is it you would like me to do, sir?"

  "So long as he's here, I want you to keep a very close eye on him. I want to know where he goes, who he talks to, etcetera. I suspect he has some connection with what happened at that estancia and I want to know what that connection is."

  "Is there some reason you think he has…'some connection'…with what happened at Estancia Shangri-La?"

  "Intuition," McGrory said. "When you have been in this game as long as I have, you develop an intuition."

  "I'm sure that's true, Mr. Ambassador."

  "So I want you to watch him very closely."

  Howell nodded. I think I have just become the fox placed in charge of the chicken coop.

  "Yung will be here in few minutes," McGrory said. "I want you to be here when I talk to him."

  "Yes, sir." "Mr. Yung just came onto the compound, Mr. Ambassador," Senora Susanna Obregon reported from Ambassador McGrory's office door.

  "When he gets up here,
make him wait five minutes and then show him in," McGrory replied, and then added: "And don't give him any coffee."

  He looked significantly at Howell.

  "Making Special Agent Yung twiddle his thumbs for a while, Robert, will make the point that his being on the personal staff of the secretary or not, I am the senior officer of the United States government here."

  "I understand, sir." Fifteen minutes later, when Yung had not appeared, McGrory was about to reach for his telephone to find out where the hell he was when Senora Obregon stepped into his office, closed the door behind her, and asked, "Mr. Yung just came in. What shall I do with him?"

  "Ask him to wait, please," Ambassador McGrory replied and held up his hand, fingers and thumb extended, to remind her of how many minutes he wanted Yung to wait.

  He then punched a button on his chronometer wristwatch, starting the timer. "The ambassador will see you now, Mr. Yung," McGrory's secretary announced.

  Yung got up off the chrome-and-plastic couch, laid on the coffee table the Buenos Aires Herald he had been reading, and walked to McGrory's door.

  "Good morning, Mr. Ambassador."

  "Welcome back to Uruguay, Yung," the ambassador said, waving him first into the room, then into one of the chairs facing his desk. "You know Mr. Howell, of course?"

  "Yes, sir. Good to see you, Mr. Howell."

  "May I offer you some coffee?" McGrory asked.

  "Thank you, sir."

  McGrory flipped the switch on his intercom and ordered coffee.

  "Long flight?" McGrory inquired as they waited.

  "It didn't seem as long, sir, as the ride from Ezeiza to Jorge Newbery. The piqueteros had the highway blocked. It took the taxi two hours to get downtown, moving five meters at a time."

  That was more information than McGrory wanted or needed.

  "Well, you know the pickets," he said. "Closing highways and bridges gives them something to do."

  "Yes, sir. I suppose that's so."

  Senora Obregon served the coffee. McGrory waited until she had left the office, then asked, "I understand, Yung, that when you were here before you weren't doing exactly what everyone-including Mr. Howell and I-thought you were doing."

  Yung didn't reply.

  "What, exactly, were you doing?" McGrory said, pointedly.

  "With the exception, sir, that I was responding to specific requests for information from the State Department and answering those queries directly to the department rather than through the embassy, I was looking into money laundering like every other FBI agent here."

  "Why do you suppose that was necessary? And that I was not informed?"

  "Sir, I have no idea. I'm pretty low on the totem pole. That's what I was told to do and I did it."

  "Who told you to do it?"

  "Mr. Quiglette," Yung said, simply.

  "You're referring to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America Quiglette?"

  Yung nodded. "Nice lady."

  "It was Mr. Quiglette who told you to tell me nothing of your special orders?"

  "What special orders is that, sir?"

  "The ones to keep me in the dark about what you were actually doing down here?"

  "Yes, sir. But it wasn't a question of not telling you specifically, sir. I was told that no one was to know what I was doing."

  "But you were aware that was highly extraordinary?"

  "No, sir. I didn't think anything about it. I've had other assignments where no one knew what I was really doing."

  "such `as?"

  "Sir, I really can't discuss anything like that."

  "And can you discuss why you were suddenly ordered out of here?"

  "No, sir," Yung said.

  "Deputy Assistant Secretary Quiglette messaged me that you were coming back here, to take over the late Mr. Lorimer's body, his assets, etcetera. Are you aware of that?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then, presumably, you are aware of the circumstances of Mr. Lorimer's death?"

  Yung looked at the ambassador. Now, here's where I'm going to have to start being deceptive and dishonest. Goddamn Castillo for getting me into this!

  "I know he was murdered, sir, and that he was Mr. Masterson's brother-in-law, but that's about all."

  "I'm curious why the State Department felt it necessary to send someone down here to do what we're perfectly capable of doing ourselves?" McGrory asked, but it was more of a statement than a question.

  Yung answered it anyway: "I was given the impression, sir, that that came from the secretary herself."

  "You didn't deal with the secretary herself?"

  "No, sir. But I was led to believe that it was personal courtesy-maybe professional courtesy-probably both-on her part to Mr. Lorimer's father, who is a retired ambassador."

  "But why you, Yung?"

  "Because I was here, I suppose. I know Uruguay and the banks and people at the embassy."

  McGrory appeared to think that over, then nodded.

  "That may well put you in a very delicate situation, Yung," McGrory said.

  "Sir?"

  "As it does me, frankly, Yung," McGrory said. "Could we go off the record a moment, do you think?"

  "Yes, sir. Of course."

  "Not that you're really keeping a record, of course. Just as a manner of speaking."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Now-bearing in mind that I don't know this for sure, but I've been in this diplomatic game for many years now, and believe me you acquire a certain insight into things…"

  "I'm sure you have, sir."

  "One of the things you learn is that people who would have you think they have a certain influence with the upper echelons of something-like the State Department, for example-don't really have much influence at all."

  "I suppose that's true," Yung said.

  "And ying yong," McGrory said, significantly.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Ying yong," McGrory repeated, and then when he saw on Yung's face that he didn't understand went on: "I thought, as an Oriental, you would understand. That's Korean, I believe."

  "I'm Chinese, Mr. Ambassador," Yung said. "My family came to this country-to the United States-in the 1840s. I don't speak Korean."

  "It means everything evens out," McGrory explained. "Sort of like the law of physics which says every action has an immediate and exactly opposite reaction."

  "Yes, sir?"

  "In this case, Yung, it would mean that someone who goes to some effort to suggest he has little influence-is 'pretty low on the totem pole,' to use your phrase-may in fact have a good deal of influence."

  What the hell is McGrory talking about? Is he suggesting I have influence?

  "I'm not sure I follow you, Mr. Ambassador."

  "I understand, of course," McGrory said.

  McGrory gave Yung time for that to sink in, then went on: "As I was saying, we are both in a some what delicate position vis-a-vis Mr. Lorimer."

  "How is that, sir?"

  "Like the secretary, I am concerned with Ambassador Lorimer. I never met him, but I understand he is a fine man, a credit to the diplomatic service."

  "That's my understanding, sir."

  "And Ambassador Silvio, in Buenos Aires, told me in confidence that Ambassador Lorimer has certain health problems…his heart."

  "So I understand," Yung said.

  "Let me tell you, Yung, what's happened here. Off the record, of course."

  "Yes, sir."

  "As incredible as this sounds, Deputy Foreign Minister Alvarez came to my office. He had with him a Senor Ordonez, who I have learned is the chief inspector of the Interior Police Division of the Uruguayan Policia Nacional. Not an official visit. He just 'happened to be in the neighborhood and wanted to chat over a cup of coffee.'"

  "Yes, sir?"

  "And he suggested not only that what really happened at Estancia Shangri-La was a shoot-out between persons unknown and United States Special Forces, but also that I knew all about it."

  Yung looked at Howell
but did not reply.

  McGrory continued: "The accusation is patently absurd, of course. I don't have to tell you that no action of that kind could take place without my knowledge and permission. As ambassador, I am the senior U.S. officer in country. And Mr. Howell-who as I'm sure you suspect is the CIA station chief-assures me that he knows of no secret operation by the intelligence community. And he would know."

  "I'd heard the rumors that Mr. Howell was CIA, sir…"

  "Well, that's classified information, of course," McGrory said. "I never told you that."

  "Yes, sir. I understand, sir. Where do think Mr. Alvarez got an idea like that? About a Special Operations mission?"

  McGrory did not reply directly.

  Instead, he said, "The question is, why would he make such an absurd accusation? That was the question I asked myself, the question that kept me from immediately reporting the incident to the department. I did, however, just about throw him out of my office."

  "Did he offer anything to substantiate the accusation?" Yung asked.

  "He showed me a…thingamabob…the shiny part of a cartridge, what comes out of a gun after it's fired?"

  "A cartridge case, sir?"

  "Precisely. He told me it had been found at the estancia. And he told me he had gone directly to the Uruguayan embassy in Washington and they had gone to the Pentagon and the Pentagon had obligingly informed them that it was a special kind of bullet used only by U.S. Army competitive rifle shooters and Special Forces."

  "A National Match case, sir? Did the case have NM stamped on it?"

  If it did, it almost certainly came from that Marine high school cheerleader's rifle.

  McGrory pointed his finger at Yung and nodded his head.

  "That's it," he said.

  "That's not much proof that our Special Forces were involved," Yung said.

  "Of course not. Because they were not involved. If there were Special Forces involved, Mr. Howell and I would have known about it. That's a given."

  "Yes, sir."

  "My temptation, of course, was to go right to the department and report the incident. You don't just about call the American ambassador a liar in his office. But as I said before, Yung, I've been in the diplomatic game for some time. I've learned to ask myself why somebody says something, does something. I realized that if I went to the department, they'd more than likely register an official complaint, possibly even recall me for consultation. And I thought maybe that's what the whole thing was all about. They wanted to cause a stink, in other words. Then I asked myself, why would they want to do that? And that answer is simple. They were creating a diversion."